A New Dust Buster

The Mitsubishi Outlander recently received a facelift. We took it for a spin to find out if its performance lives up to its good looks.

- Cyril Klopper

Not as imposing as a Toyota Fortuner, but substantially bigger than a Suzuki Vitara,the Mitsubishi Outlander occupies a niche gap between compact and mid-sized SUVs. You’d think this would be a good place to be in, but when you consider that the Outlander is Mitsubishi’s worst selling vehicle in South Africa – selling on average just seven units a month – it appears that we don’t have much faith in it.

So what’s amiss? Frankly, not a lot. It’s attractive, particularly after a design facelift, and it also has an all new INVECS-III Continuous Variable Transmission (CVT) gearbox with a six-step Sports Mode shift control that works rather well. I’m not a fan of CVT gearboxes in general, but this one is praiseworthy. I didn’t even realise it was a CVT until I read the spec sheet!